Guild Wars 2

I have to say I’m extremely disappointed upon seeing the new balance patch preview. My initial reaction was: ANet are you even playing the same game as us?

A couple awful changes really stand out:

Engineer:
Rocket charge CD increased by a whopping 2 seconds. This will have zero impact on the game and scrapper sustain. Where the are damage coefficient nerfs to the hammer skills? Where is the nerf to hammer 5, which is a 1200 AOE stun that is contributing immensely to the insane CC flying around? (Scrapper hammer 5 is of course not the only culprit; reapers, DH, druid’s, etc are also guilty).

Necromancer:
Boon corrupt on the scepter auto attack? Corrupt boon CD reduced to 15 s and less boons converted? ANet, ever heard of the phrase: “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”? These skills were perfectly fine already. That scepter boon corrupt shouldn’t even be in the game, but if it were to be put in the game, it should be on the axe auto because axe needs love, is the necro boon corrupt weapon, and desperately needs an auto-chain. What game are you playing where condi reaper needs a buff? Most importantly, where is the deathly chill damage coefficient nerf? If any condi build wants to tick 700 dps, they need to ramp up and constantly apply bleeds/condi’s. Chill as a damaging condition requires zero ramp-up time and thus should not have such a high damage coefficient (0.3x+202).

Elementalist:
Diamond skin update is absolutely idiotic. Absolutely. Idiotic. Compare the new diamond skin to the necro’s shrouded removal. Shrouded removal is a very powerful trait that removes 1 condi every 3 s while in death shroud…even this is less passive than the new diamond skin because the necro has to choose to go into shroud. Condi removal on a 1 second CD? What were you thinking? That absolutely screws over condi builds like ranger and burn guard (for example) which don’t focus on applying so many different types of condi’s, but were able to break the old diamond skin with carrion…how will these builds get the ele below 75% now? Why would you make a trait that rewards condi spam? It’s going to be overpowered. What were you guys thinking giving this a 1s ICD? Did you guys even test this outside of a hotjoin? 100% curious and irritated.

Mesmer:
Well of precognition: This change is all well and good, but if it’s just pulsing aegis for 3 seconds, you should give it’s capture-point contribution back.

Ranger:
Protect me changes…do we really need more CC in this game?
Search and rescue: just a 10x better version of necro’s transfusion. Clap, clap, clap; creative.
What about ranger pets? Why are the bristleback and smokescale so much more powerful than the other pets? All other ranger pets need a serious buff to be a remotely useful class mechanic, and the bristleback and smokescale need a serious nerf to their DPS (and possibly F2 CD’s). Just compare bristleback to the river drake—they are supposed to serve the same purpose but the bristleback is vastly superior.
And hold up, just where are the shortbow buffs? Have you guys ever used this weapon? Compare ranger shortbow to scrapper hammer, or revenant hammer, or actually any weapon in the entire game. How can a weapon like the scrapper hammer even be designed with a straight face with the state of the ranger shortbow?

Thief and warrior:
This is all just wrong. It’s blatant powercreep. Remember after the June 23rd patch, after the DD cele ele fire line was nerfed? The game was incredibly balanced, and thieves and warriors did just fine. Fast forward to HoT, and now thieves and warriors are hurting a bit. But it’s important to remember that thieves and warriors are well-balanced around the base specs, and its the absolutely overpowered elite specs that are providing so much trouble. And all of the base specs are in trouble compared with the elite specs; not just thief and warrior. Solution: Stop buffing everything and just nerf all of the elite specs. The nerfs you’ve previewed thus far are going to be totally insufficient.

All I see is power creep, and a few well-intentioned but poorly designed fixes which will not help any of the underlying problems plaguing the game, ANet. I was excited to listen to the balance preview, but it just left me disappointed.

Keep in mind that this wasn’t really a preview, but 100% of the balance changes.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Keep in mind that this wasn’t really a preview, but 100% of the balance changes.

Seriously? I was under the impression from watching the livestream that they just picked 4 things from each profession.

Salamander.2504:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Keep in mind that this wasn’t really a preview, but 100% of the balance changes.

Seriously? I was under the impression from watching the livestream that they just picked 4 things from each profession.

Well, their preview has always been most of the changes, so lots people assume this will be the same.

Bear in mind OP the end goal is to have each class have three or more elite specs. It doesn’t matter whether or not Thief and Warrior are balanced around base specs because in the future they won’t matter. Going forward Thief and Warrior need to have their bases buffed. They are the only base classes that objectively can’t compete with elite specializations.

Schurge.5194:

Bear in mind OP the end goal is to have each class have three or more elite specs. It doesn’t matter whether or not Thief and Warrior are balanced around base specs because in the future they won’t matter. Going forward Thief and Warrior need to have their bases buffed. They are the only base classes that objectively can’t compete with elite specializations.

Sure. “Lets make a few classes unplayable for 2+ years because EVENTUALLY we’ll fix them” isn’t really a future proof plan though, because no one will be around to play the game by that point.

Schurge.5194:

Bear in mind OP the end goal is to have each class have three or more elite specs. It doesn’t matter whether or not Thief and Warrior are balanced around base specs because in the future they won’t matter. Going forward Thief and Warrior need to have their bases buffed. They are the only base classes that objectively can’t compete with elite specializations.

Engi and ele are really the only base classes that can compete with the elite specs. Ever tried base necro, ranger, mesmer, guardian etc. in ranked currently? Warrior and thief aren’t in a unique situation.

I actually think this is a really promising preview. In the sense of, sPvP is going even further down the drain, so I’ll finally feel no urge whatsoever to play their BS when that crap goes live.
Now all we need is a complete seperation between sPvP and WvW/PvE skills & trait-wise, so Karl and his comrades can’t ruin the fun I’m having in WvW when driving sPvP farther into the ground.

Whatever.

Scrappers needed a nerf. What did ANet do? Absolutely nothing.

Necro chill damage needs a nerf. Instead, ANet buffs scepter and corrupt boon, 2 things that were absolutely fine and shouldn’t have been touched.

Diamond skin needed a nerf. Instead, ANet gives it a haircut and a manicure.

Ranger HoT pets need a nerf. No ANet response. Ranger shortbow needed buff forever: absolutely no indication that they are even aware that this weapon exists. Compare shortbow 2 to DH longbow 2, rev hammer 2. Compare shortbow 5 with mesmer shield 5, scrapper hammer 5. It’s almost funny how broken this stuff is.

Thief did not need a buff. ANet buffed them.

Totally unacceptable changes.

By disappointing balance preview, OP seems to mean that his favorite class didn’t get a massive buff and his most disliked classes didn’t get nerfed enough.

Kuya.6495:

By disappointing balance preview, OP seems to mean that his favorite class didn’t get a massive buff.

I main reaper. Which class did you think I mained?

It was obvious, cause of [b]

Shirlias.8104:

It was obvious, cause of [b]

Yeah, but in my post I’m asking for condi reaper nerfs, not buffs. And I main a condi reaper. I use deathly chill 100% of the time, and I acknowledge that it needs a nerf.

lol.

I was most disappointed that they didn’t give any love to some of the more underused skills and traits of each class. I suppose a balance team can only do so much at a time but it’s disheartening to see my favorite classes still funneled into the same builds just to be competetive.

@
“Mesmer:
Well of precognition: This change is all well and good, but if it’s just pulsing aegis for 3 seconds, you should give it’s capture-point contribution back.”

If it pulses aegis and not blur/distortion <-? the thing about capture-point contribution solves itself.

@
Thief part:

Between june and HoT-release thief definitly wasn´t well balanced. There was just one specc viable and that was far to forgiving (shadow-arts). S/D got destroyed while it was already weak at that point.

Increased AA-chain is a very good change and could solve two problems at once, weird aftercasts in the chain and damage-aspect.

I´m not sure about dagger-increase. If I´m right its less increase in damage than sword. But when we think about it that a thief is very weak when autoattacking cause of lacking passive-defence its ok I guess.

Fleet Shadow changed to Instant Reflex (gain evasion for 2s when struck below the health threshold –50%, 40s CD). I don´t understand this. Fleet Shadow was wrong in that traitline and never worth taking over other stuff, but adding more passive stuff into the game? ._.
I think the changes in general are ok (for thief) and wouldn´t increase the power creep significantly. High damage mostly in melee-range (even clusterbomb is strongest in melee range ^^ ). Remember that our health randomly drops about 50% by damage not even directed at us in that bunker-meta. Cele-air overload does 1000 damage on each strike while we are in stealth. Damage just thrown into a teamfight mindlessly but still successful makes the game frustrating.
If its to much increase of damage on daggers, remove it and go on. Shouldn´t be a problem (yeah, I know).

Salamander.2504:

Kuya.6495:

By disappointing balance preview, OP seems to mean that his favorite class didn’t get a massive buff.

I main reaper. Which class did you think I mained?

So you’re mad that your class didn’t get nerfed?

You’re right. You should be outraged.

@ Arcaeudus +1
@ Coronit, seems logical about well of precog, hope that’s true.

Kuya.6495:

Salamander.2504:

Kuya.6495:

By disappointing balance preview, OP seems to mean that his favorite class didn’t get a massive buff.

I main reaper. Which class did you think I mained?

So you’re mad that your class didn’t get nerfed?

You’re right. You should be outraged.

Yeah…because game balance should be, and is more important than my own personal class. The balance patch preview they showed does nothing to solve any of the problems plaguing PvP right now.

Arcaedus.7290:

I was most disappointed that they didn’t give any love to some of the more underused skills and traits of each class. I suppose a balance team can only do so much at a time but it’s disheartening to see my favorite classes still funneled into the same builds just to be competitive.

Sounds like they’re doing too much as it is but yeah priorities could have been different in other areas. I main a rev and even I admit we were a bit overtuned in places, but Facet of Light was actually properly balanced making up for poor healing overall outside of Mallyx (which you shouldn’t be forced to take) since you could pop it when an opponent is committed to an attack like rapid fire and increase some survivability while stunned. UA needed to be reigned in while Ventari needs some buffs.

Maybe one of the new amulets will give Ventari a de facto buff anyway (I’m considering experimenting with Mender’s and even the current cleric’s with thief runes feels okay and the 10% extra healing output sigil on staff)? The idea is a healer/burster hybrid with decent CC (Ventari tablet blast, sword and staff 5, jade winds when switching to Shiro) but none of the current amulets seem satisfying for the role as picking cleric’s gives you weak attack and healing feels okayish.

I agree with the op on a lot of points, It feels like Anet’s playing an entire different game than the rest of us.

I just want to know what they intend for each class to be able to do. What are their strengths? Weaknesses? Roles? The fact is that some classes got nerfs with no thought of what they’re going to do afterwards.

Necro/Rev/Druid/Scrapper/Ele/Thief will all be way overturned. I can’t wait to see how much burst is going to be in this game post patch. I guess Guards/Mesmer/Warrior can just sit in the nonviable corner because Anet has no idea how to balance.

Salamander.2504:

Thief and warrior:
This is all just wrong. It’s blatant powercreep. Remember after the June 23rd patch, after the DD cele ele fire line was nerfed? The game was incredibly balanced, and thieves and warriors did just fine.

Most thieves started to leave the game or switched to mesmer due to their class being unvaillable after June – so no – things were neither balanced nor was thief fine.

The Necromancer changes are ok, imo. The game has a ton of boons in it, and Necromancers needed more options in viable boon corruption to escape the spite/sr/reaper meta.
Corrupt boon had become a relic of a time when it could crush boon heavy builds in one blow. The change makes it viable as a one slot boon hate option, but it does a noticeable amount of damage to yourself each time. It also makes corruptions slightly better as a trait line (stunbreak corruption please?).
The Scepter buff isn’t quite as terrifying as it looks. By spamming autoattack on Scepter, you are doing relatively low damage at a slow rate. It isn’t the kind of change I would’ve made, because it helps Spite Reaper too, but I’m not really worried that it’ll be too strong.
imo, Axe shouldn’t be boon hate centered. Boon corruption is much stronger on a condi damage, and Axe needs a new set of tools from the ones it has if it ever hopes to be threatening at range.

I almost never used signets with Spite, if you think Curses trait is best for condi reaper, just you have to think! One clue, Shroud 2 skill converts boons into condis, omg, if you would see that…! Very few ppl using it, I can 1vs1 even a mesmer now and he cryes! ha I usually now 2vs1 in ranked to, and I’m diamond!
And if you come with that that Spite is better with signets, buhahaha, I’ve tried in unranked arena, and you are joking me! Shroud 2 skill with that trait line is insane, you kitten your self if you do it right! Just figure it out! If you do it right you will be in love! ( There is a big trick how to use blind very often too.. blind causes chill every 5 sec, chill dmg is like fire dmg, f insane)

I really don’t think ANet has a clue how to balance. Their solution hammer being leagues better than all of our other weapons is a 2 second cooldown increase on one skill. They think scrapper defenses/sustain might be ‘a bit too high’, but they’re not reducing the super speed healing on rapid regeneration, or reducing the condi damage reduction on adaptive armor, or doing anything about the ridiculous healing from rocket charge into cleansing burst/elixir shell.

It just looks like they’re not willing to do anything to combat the ridiculous power creep HoT brought with elite specs, and because they’re too lazy or incompetent to nerf & redesign most of it correctly, they’re just going to remove every tanky amulet to cover up the problem. If this is really the course they want to take with PvP, I frankly can’t see it getting any better anytime soon.

I can’t agree more with the OP’s assessment of power creep.

What I found most disappointing is not touching the dragonhunter’s wards (longbow and Maw). It literally looks like a white velvet stanchion and we still can’t dodgeroll past it? How about reducing it to 2-3 seconds? How about at the very least reducing it to 4 seconds on par with the aura changes?!? Teamfights can be trivialized by this one skill that hard-counters kiting for not just one person but everyone on point, or looking to enter the point in the near future. It’s basically as disrupting as the Ele’s shocking aura, but with 50% longer duration and affecting everyone at once.

I agree with OP on this one point ( too lazy to touch on the others ) : The powercreep is ridiculous.

I would very much prefer nerfs to every kitten class / elite spec including my beloved reaper than see power creep on thief and warrior. Thief and warrior is fine, it was the meta / OPness of the other elite specs that made them difficult to use. And yet some experienced thieves ( and warriors? idk ) still shine. If you keep making us stronger, this game would become too kittening easy to play. It’d become a ridiculous skillspam-fest.

Coronit.9432:

@
Fleet Shadow changed to Instant Reflex (gain evasion for 2s when struck below the health threshold –50%, 40s CD). I don´t understand this. Fleet Shadow was wrong in that traitline and never worth taking over other stuff, but adding more passive stuff into the game? ._.

this is the equivalent of engi auto elixir s
it’s supposed to prevent you from getting rekt without noticing

that’s the theory behind this change
however i don’t really see it how useful it is for acrobatics

there was automatic shadowstep already, thief didn’t really need this and the acro line didn’t need it either imo

LordOtto.2650:

I almost never used signets with Spite, if you think Curses trait is best for condi reaper, just you have to think! One clue, Shroud 2 skill converts boons into condis, omg, if you would see that…! Very few ppl using it, I can 1vs1 even a mesmer now and he cryes! ha I usually now 2vs1 in ranked to, and I’m diamond!
And if you come with that that Spite is better with signets, buhahaha, I’ve tried in unranked arena, and you are joking me! Shroud 2 skill with that trait line is insane, you kitten your self if you do it right! Just figure it out! If you do it right you will be in love! ( There is a big trick how to use blind very often too.. blind causes chill every 5 sec, chill dmg is like fire dmg, f insane)

Path of Corruption would be much better if RS 2 didn’t spin in front of the foe for its full duration before activating. Besides, Spite isn’t just good for the boon corruption. It gives Reapers vulnerability on chill and large amounts of might, as well as an additional chill when the enemy reaches 50%.
I used to use Curses, and while it certainly isn’t bad, it just doesn’t bring anywhere near as much to the table as Spite (especially where minor traits are concerned).

Hey all, so as of today, 3 weeks have passed since the balance patch. I feel that that’s enough time to get a sense for how things stand. I’m going to quote my original post and do a revised analysis on some of the issues I brought up when the balance patch was previewed. Thanks for reading.

Salamander.2504:

I have to say I’m extremely disappointed upon seeing the new balance patch preview. My initial reaction was: ANet are you even playing the same game as us?

A couple awful changes really stand out:

Engineer:
Rocket charge CD increased by a whopping 2 seconds. This will have zero impact on the game and scrapper sustain. Where the are damage coefficient nerfs to the hammer skills? Where is the nerf to hammer 5, which is a 1200 AOE stun that is contributing immensely to the insane CC flying around? (Scrapper hammer 5 is of course not the only culprit; reapers, DH, druid’s, etc are also guilty).

This hasn’t really changed—scrapper is still overtuned because of the excellent offensive and defensive capabilities of the hammer. The CD reduction on the sneak gyro didn’t do anything to fix the underlying issue of a long-duration instant cast aoe stealth on a CD that’s under 60 seconds.

Salamander.2504:

Necromancer:
Boon corrupt on the scepter auto attack? Corrupt boon CD reduced to 15 s and less boons converted? ANet, ever heard of the phrase: “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”? These skills were perfectly fine already. That scepter boon corrupt shouldn’t even be in the game, but if it were to be put in the game, it should be on the axe auto because axe needs love, is the necro boon corrupt weapon, and desperately needs an auto-chain. What game are you playing where condi reaper needs a buff? Most importantly, where is the deathly chill damage coefficient nerf? If any condi build wants to tick 700 dps, they need to ramp up and constantly apply bleeds/condi’s. Chill as a damaging condition requires zero ramp-up time and thus should not have such a high damage coefficient (0.3x+202).

Some folks disagreed with me on this one, but I think the past 3 weeks have shown us that the above comment is still spot on: the scepter auto-attack rewards auto-spam by perma-fearing anyone pulsing stability (ranger shout elite, RS#3, juggernaut, etc.). Robert Gee went to great length to explain to us that the underpowered necro axe auto couldn’t be buffed because it wasn’t a projectile, and then ANet went ahead and gave scepter an amazing auto-chain. The HoT elite specs introduced so many new forms of crowd-control that PvP these days is just an exercise in tossing (and being tossed) about like a ragdoll…so naturally, people bring stability. And now a non-projectile auto-attack can basically spam-corrupt stability. It’s so over the top. The boon corrupt on scepter auto needs to be removed ASAP. The corrupt boon change is meh—I liked the old one better anyways. Chill damage is still overtuned; enough said but for the love of grenth please fix this.

Salamander.2504:

Elementalist:
Diamond skin update is absolutely idiotic. Absolutely. Idiotic. Compare the new diamond skin to the necro’s shrouded removal. Shrouded removal is a very powerful trait that removes 1 condi every 3 s while in death shroud…even this is less passive than the new diamond skin because the necro has to choose to go into shroud. Condi removal on a 1 second CD? What were you thinking? That absolutely screws over condi builds like ranger and burn guard (for example) which don’t focus on applying so many different types of condi’s, but were able to break the old diamond skin with carrion…how will these builds get the ele below 75% now? Why would you make a trait that rewards condi spam? It’s going to be overpowered. What were you guys thinking giving this a 1s ICD? Did you guys even test this outside of a hotjoin? 100% curious and irritated.

This comment ended up being wrong because the balance preview neglected to mention that the 1s ICD was gated by an “on-hit” condition, so diamond skin has relinquished it’s throne. Hurray.

Salamander.2504:

Mesmer:
Well of precognition: This change is all well and good, but if it’s just pulsing aegis for 3 seconds, you should give it’s capture-point contribution back.

I actually haven’t used this skill since the preview, but I believe the capture-point contribution is back now, so that’s good I guess, although the skill is now useless. In other more important news, mesmer is actually balanced now. The glaring problem? Every other elite spec is still overpowered, so playing a mesmer is a big disadvantage to your team. Please balance the rest of the elite specs around Chronomancer!

Salamander.2504:

Ranger:
Protect me changes…do we really need more CC in this game?
Search and rescue: just a 10x better version of necro’s transfusion. Clap, clap, clap; creative.
What about ranger pets? Why are the bristleback and smokescale so much more powerful than the other pets? All other ranger pets need a serious buff to be a remotely useful class mechanic, and the bristleback and smokescale need a serious nerf to their DPS (and possibly F2 CD’s). Just compare bristleback to the river drake—they are supposed to serve the same purpose but the bristleback is vastly superior.
And hold up, just where are the shortbow buffs? Have you guys ever used this weapon? Compare ranger shortbow to scrapper hammer, or revenant hammer, or actually any weapon in the entire game. How can a weapon like the scrapper hammer even be designed with a straight face with the state of the ranger shortbow?

Yeah, everything here is still correct. Protect me isn’t a huge offender of CC but the CD could be increased. Search and Rescue is just pure cancer and vastly superior to every other rezzing utility and the necro grandmaster trait transfusion. ANet, why did you remove quickness rezzing and then add this to the game? It’s so lame. As for smokescale DPS, I think I was incorrect on that one, but the bristleback F2 needs the bug to be fixed: it’s currently shooting 20 projectiles instead of the stated 15, so fixing this would bring it inline.

Salamander.2504:

Thief and warrior:
This is all just wrong. It’s blatant powercreep. Remember after the June 23rd patch, after the DD cele ele fire line was nerfed? The game was incredibly balanced, and thieves and warriors did just fine. Fast forward to HoT, and now thieves and warriors are hurting a bit. But it’s important to remember that thieves and warriors are well-balanced around the base specs, and its the absolutely overpowered elite specs that are providing so much trouble. And all of the base specs are in trouble compared with the elite specs; not just thief and warrior. Solution: Stop buffing everything and just nerf all of the elite specs. The nerfs you’ve previewed thus far are going to be totally insufficient.

I still stand by this. It’s hard to notice with warrior as I haven’t seen too many, but the thief auto’s just hit too hard, plain and simple.

Salamander.2504:

All I see is power creep, and a few well-intentioned but poorly designed fixes which will not help any of the underlying problems plaguing the game, ANet. I was excited to listen to the balance preview, but it just left me disappointed.

I still feel this way.

Thanks for reading and re-reading. Cheers.